“What a day it was when you arrived, Emmie. Do you remember it? A bit over three years ago, was it not?” Dr. Holdridge—Uncle Henry for a long time now—smiled as he peered through the chariot window, the August sunlight turning his wig into a white cloud.

Outside, Water Street bustled with waterfront commerce. Carts filled with green goods rolled over the cobblestones. Hogsheads rumbled over the dock. Stevedores, hawkers, newsboys, and drunken soldiers weaved past one another, every last one of them calling out or laughing. New York had proved to be many things, but quiet wasn’t one of them.

“Of course I remember, Uncle,” I replied. “How could I forget? That was the day I found a perfect home with a wonderful uncle and aunt.” I looked from him to Aunt Nora, the two of them snug as squirrels on the bench across me, then to Lucy at my side. “And the day I met a dear cousin and true friend of my heart.”

The best lies were also truths. I had come to love them. The Holdridges were devout, decent, and loving—they knew no other way but kindness. Before I met them, I’d never have believed such people existed.

Lucy reached over and took my gloved hand in hers. “It was a very good day when you came to us,” she said, “but today will be sublime.”

Her skin looked like buttermilk in the sunlight, her blond curls like silk. Lucy had terrified me at first. I couldn’t imagine ever being like her. So delicate. So feminine. Now I was—but it hadn’t been easy. For a year, I’d squirmed in heavy, hot gowns and knocked vases off tables with my full petticoats. I’d cried myself to sleep over my dancing stumbles and regretted a hundred artless comments that had popped out of my mouth. But I’d survived and learned a couple of things along the way: people believed what they wanted to believe, and wealth forgave just about anything. That first year, I didn’t convince New York’s elite that I belonged in their midst. Miss Coates’s inheritance did.

“Are you happy, Emmie?” Lucy gave my hand a gentle squeeze. “You’re finally going to swim again!”

Today, I turned twenty-two. In another week, I’d turn nineteen, my true age. As Miss Coates, I was always three years older than myself. To celebrate, the Holdridges were taking me, Lucy, and our friend, Charlotte Winters, who rode in the carriage behind us, to one of the bathing machines on the North River. It’d been Uncle Henry’s idea. He had seen them advertised in Rivington’s paper—little houses that allowed ladies to bathe in privacy. Emmeline Coates had loved wading in the sea as a girl in Antigua, so of course she’d adore the chance to swim again.